Georg Simmel Quotes

Quotes about:

• Fashion is the playing area for individuals that lack interior autonomy and need more support points, but who nonetheless feel the need to stand out, to be paid attention to and be considered apart from the rest Fashion elevates the insignificant by making it in the representative of a totality, the particular incarnation of a common spirit. Its function is to make possible the kind of social obedience which is at the same time individual differentiation It is the mixing of submission and the feeling of domination that is in action here.

  Georg Simmel

  Fashion, Support, Feelings

  47 Copy quote

• He is educated who knows how to find out what he doesn't know.

  Georg Simmel

  Learning, Educated, Know How

  36 Copy quote

• The deepest problems of modern life derive from the claim of the individual to preserve the autonomy and individuality of his existence in the face of overwhelming social forces, of historical heritage, of external culture, and of the technique of life.

  Georg Simmel

  Being Yourself, Inspire, Historical

  Georg Simmel, Kurt H. Wolff (1950). “The Sociology of Georg Simmel”, p.409, Simon and Schuster

  16 Copy quote

• Every relationship between two individuals or two groups will be characterized by the ratio of secrecy that is involved in it.

  Georg Simmel

  Relationship, Two, Groups

  "The Sociology of Secrecy and of Secret Societies". American Journal of Sociology, Volume 11, Issue 4, pp. 462, January, 1906.

  18 Copy quote

• The calculative exactness of practical life which the money economy has brought about corresponds to the ideal of natural science: to transform the world by mathematical formulas. Only money economy has filled the days of so many people with weighing, calculating, with numerical determinations, with a reduction of qualitative values to quantitative ones.

  Georg Simmel

  Determination, People, World

  Georg Simmel, Kurt H. Wolff (1950). “The Sociology of Georg Simmel”, p.412, Simon and Schuster

  52 Copy quote

• The individual has become a mere cog in an enormous organization of things and powers which tear from his hands all progress, spirituality, and value in order to transform them from their subjective form into the form of a purely objective life.

  Georg Simmel

  Hands, Order, Organization

  "The Metropolis and Modern Life" by Georg Simmel (1903), translated by Kurt Wolff in "The Sociology of Georg Simmel" edited by D. Weinstein, New York: Free Press, (p. 422), 1950.

  24 Copy quote

• Music and love are the only accomplishments of humanity which do not, in an absolute sense, have to be called attempts with unsuitable means.

  Georg Simmel

  Mean, Accomplishment, Humanity

  9 Copy quote

• Modern culture is constantly growing more objective. Its tissues grow more and more out of impersonal energies, and absorb less and less the subjective entirety of the individual.

  Georg Simmel

  Subjectivity, Energy, Culture

  Georg Simmel (2008). “Englischsprachige Veröffentlichungen: 1893 - 1910”

  26 Copy quote

• By my existence I am nothing more than an empty place, an outline,that is reserved within being in general. Given with it, though, is the duty to fill in this empty place. That is my life.

  Georg Simmel

  Empty Places, Given, Existence

  Georg Simmel (2015). “The View of Life: Four Metaphysical Essays with Journal Aphorisms”, p.204, University of Chicago Press

  20 Copy quote

• For, to be a stranger is naturally a very positive relation; it is a specific form of interaction.

  Georg Simmel

  Stranger, Form, Relation

  27 Copy quote

• The intellectually sophisticated person is indifferent to all genuine individuality, because relationships and reactions result from it which cannot be exhausted with logical operations.

  Georg Simmel

  Individuality, Exhausted, Individualism

  Georg Simmel, Kurt H. Wolff (1950). “The Sociology of Georg Simmel”, p.411, Simon and Schuster

  33 Copy quote

• In the immediate as well as the symbolic sense, in the physical as well as the intellectual sense, we are at any moment those who separate the connected, or connect the separate.

  Georg Simmel

  Intellectual, Moments, Wells

  Georg Simmel, David Frisby, Mike Featherstone (1997). “Simmel on culture: selected writings”, Sage Publications Ltd

  14 Copy quote

• Secrecy involves a tension which, at the moment of revelation, finds its release.

  Georg Simmel

  Moments, Revelations, Secrecy

  Georg Simmel, Otthein Rammstedt (2008). “Gesamtausgabe”

  17 Copy quote

• The psychological basis of the metropolitan type of individuality consists in the intensification of nervous stimulation which results from the swift and uninterrupted change of outer and inner stimuli.

  Georg Simmel

  Individuality, Individualism, Nervous

  13 Copy quote

• Cities are, first of all, seats of the highest economic division of labor.

  Georg Simmel

  Cities, Division Of Labor, Firsts

  Georg Simmel, Kurt H. Wolff (1950). “The Sociology of Georg Simmel”, p.420, Simon and Schuster

  15 Copy quote

• Gratitude, as it were, is the moral memory of mankind. In this respect, it differs from faithfulness by being more practical and impulsive: although it may remain, of course, something purely internal, it may yet engender new actions. It is an ideal bridge which the soul comes across again and again, so to speak, and which, upon provocations too slight to throw a new bridge to the other person, it uses to come closer to him.

  Georg Simmel

  Gratitude, Memories, Moral

  "The Sociology of Georg Simmel".

  21 Copy quote

• Man's nature, originally good and common to all, should develop unhampered.

  Georg Simmel

  Men, Common, Should

  Georg Simmel, Kurt H. Wolff (1950). “The Sociology of Georg Simmel”, p.409, Simon and Schuster

  6 Copy quote

• Judging from the ugly and repugnant things that are sometimes in vogue, it would seem as though fashion were desirous of exhibiting its power by getting us to adopt the most atrocious things for its sake alone.

  Georg Simmel

  Fashion, Judging, Ugly

  Georg Simmel (2008). “Englischsprachige Veröffentlichungen: 1893 - 1910”

  14 Copy quote

• Every relationship between persons causes a picture of each to take form in the mind of the other, and this picture evidently is in reciprocal relationship with that personal relationship.

  Georg Simmel

  Relationship, Mind, Causes

  Georg Simmel (2008). “Englischsprachige Veröffentlichungen: 1893 - 1910”

  12 Copy quote

• For the division of labor demands from the individual an ever more one-sided accomplishment, and the greatest advance in a one-sided pursuit only too frequently means dearth to the personality of the individual.

  Georg Simmel

  Mean, Division Of Labor, Accomplishment

  28 Copy quote

• Discretion is nothing other than the sense of justice with respect to the sphere of the intimate contents of life.

  Georg Simmel

  Respect, Justice, Spheres

  Georg Simmel (2008). “Englischsprachige Veröffentlichungen: 1893 - 1910”

  14 Copy quote

• Wandering, (is) considered as a state of detachment form every given point in space.

  Georg Simmel

  Space, Detachment, States

  13 Copy quote

• Thus, the technique of metropolitan life is unimaginable without the most punctual integration of all activities and mutual relations into a stable and impersonal time schedule.

  Georg Simmel

  Technique, Schedules, Life Is

  Georg Simmel, Kurt H. Wolff (1950). “The Sociology of Georg Simmel”, p.413, Simon and Schuster

  10 Copy quote

• Nothing more can be attempted than to establish the beginning and the direction of an infinitely long road. The pretension of any systematic and definitive completeness would be, at least, a self-illusion. Perfection can here be obtained by the individual student only in the subjective sense that he communicates everything he has been able to see.

  Georg Simmel

  Self, Long, Perfection

  Georg Simmel, Kurt H. Wolff (1950). “The Sociology of Georg Simmel”, p.33, Simon and Schuster

  12 Copy quote

• The metropolis has always been the seat of the money economy.

  Georg Simmel

  Economy, Metropolis, Seats

  Georg Simmel, Kurt H. Wolff (1950). “The Sociology of Georg Simmel”, p.411, Simon and Schuster

  10 Copy quote

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